On the accession of a new Emperor, men of the first rank and situation in the empire consider themselves as highly honoured and extremely fortunate, if the graces of their daughters should prove sufficient to provide them a place in the list of his concubines; in which case, like the nuns in some countries of Europe, they are doomed for ever to reside within the walls of the palace. Such a fate, however, being common in China in a certain degree to all women-kind, is less to be deplored than the similar lot of those in Europe, where one sex is supposed to be entitled to an equal degree of liberty with the other; and as the custom of China authorizes the sale of all young women by their parents or relations to men they never saw, and without their consent previously obtained, there can be no hardship in consigning them over to the arms of the prince; nor is any disgrace attached to the condition of a concubine, where every marriage is a legal prostitution. At the death of the sovereign all his women are removed to a separate building, called by a term which, divested of its metaphor, implies the _Palace of Chastity_, where they are doomed to reside during the remainder of their lives. CHAP. VI. Language.--Literature, and the fine Arts.--Sciences.--Mechanics, and Medicine. _Opinion of the Chinese Language being hieroglyphical erroneous.--Doctor Hager's mistakes.--Etymological Comparisons fallacious.--Examples of--Nature of the Chinese written Character.--Difficulty and Ambiguity of.--Curious Mistake of an eminent Antiquarian.--Mode of acquiring the Character.--Oral Language.--Mantchoo Tartar Alphabet.--Chinese Literature.--Astronomy.--Chronology.--Cycle of sixty Years.--Geography. --Arithmetic.--Chemical Arts.--Cannon and Gunpowder.--Distillation. --Potteries.--Silk Manufactures.--Ivory.--Bamboo.--Paper.--Ink. --Printing.--Mechanics.--Music.--Painting.--Sculpture.--Architecture. --Hotel of the English Embassador in Pekin.--The Great Wall.--The Grand Canal.--Bridges.--Cemeteries.--Natural Philosophy.--Medicine.--Chinese Pharmacopoeia.--Quacks.--Contagious Fevers.--Small pox.--Opthalmia. --Venereal Disease.--Midwifery.--Surgery.--Doctor Gregory's Opinion of their Medical Knowledge.--Sir William Jones's Opinion of their general Character._